Human Rights Watch hopes to ban the creation of autonomous weapons

Thanks to the use of drones, there is a reduced need for sending human beings into the field of battle which in turn could cut down on the amount of lives lost (at least for one side), but given what we’ve seen in movies like Terminator, it could be possible that one day in the future, our wars could be fought by fully autonomous weapons. While fully autonomous weapons are not a reality just yet, the Human Rights Watch has released a report in which they are appealing to the rest of the world to abandon the search and development of fully autonomous weapons, leaving an ominous warning by saying “before it’s too late”.

According to the report, the Human Rights Watch is worried about the implications of fully autonomous weapons because they would lack certain human controls about them, namely the ability to decide whether or not to kill someone, which perhaps could be thought of as mercy in some cases. The Human Rights Watch is also calling upon governments to draft an international treaty that would ban such autonomous weapons before it is too late.